Ivan Lewis announces £175m to hit 2010 campus target

The care services minister said closing the campuses – small homes where research has shown residents have fewer friends, less choice and fewer things to do than people with learning disabilities in other settings – “would close one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history”.

People were moved into NHS campuses, where they are classed as in-patients and lack housing rights, following the closure of the vast majority of long-stay hospitals, institutions which Lewis said “had disfigured our society”.

Getting the NHS to move people out of campuses and into supported living more quickly is one of the aims of Community Care’s A Life Like Any Other campaign to improve the life chances of people with learning disabilities.